IF YOU COULD TRY AGAIN

If you had the chance to go back and try again, would you? Sometimes the work wears you down. You reach a point where you have lost the spark, lost the thread, lost sight of the big idea. You start to feel like you are holding back the thing you are supposed to lead. So you make the choice and walk away - not because it's done but because you feel like you don't have enough left to give. 

But it lingers there in the back of your mind. You compare the next assignment to it and the one after that, and they don't really quite compare. You pick up new experiences and wisdom and think about how you would apply them to that thing you left behind. It was the thing that mattered, and it still is. And you know that if you went back you would do it differently. Because you're a different person and the work is in a different context and you'd approach it with a different mindset. The distance helps you see it more clearly. Being away from the details helps you see the potential and the perspective you lost sight of when you were so close to it. You couldn't have done it differently if you had stayed. But maybe now... 

Sometimes we leave so we can go somewhere better. But sometimes we leave so we can come back better.